


Happily Ever After

by Sifl



Series: It's Like Christmas Up In Here [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alienation, F/M, Prescratch, Shameless Birdsprite Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 17:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davesprite thinks about his identity and placement in the grand scheme of the game. How can he end up happy if he's a damaged copy of someone else? Set during the Cascade flash in the moments after Jade Godtiers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my collection of Dave/Jade fics (also seen on fanfiction.net as "It's Like Christmas Up In Here") and was inspired by He is We's song "Happily Ever After", hence the title. I recommend going to read its lyrics before reading it... the song is upbeat, but it has that underlying fear to it in the words.
> 
> Just because Davesprite gets to spend the next three years on a boat with Jade doesn't mean he gets the girl, y'know.

His name was Dave Strider.

Her name was Jade Harley.

And they were dealing with something a little bigger than what they thought- at least, that’s what he thought as he stared at them from behind his dark glasses. He had watched, awestruck, as her trembling shoulders had straightened, her waiflike wanderings became confidently rooted, her tears had disappeared, and her hands had made the journey away from his and towards something much, much greater.  
Of course he was happy to still be alive. Of course he was happy that she had become a goddess (not that she wasn’t already one to him, not that he’d admit it, and not that he’d ever stop adoring her once others began to) and of course he wanted her to keep going towards brighter horizons.

But that didn’t mean that, at the same time, he could swallow the lump in his throat and deny that he also (paradoxically, just like everything else when you’re technically a clone of a clone of your paradox self) wished he were dead and she was still a normal girl on an obscure island (and he didn’t know her, and could easily admit he wasn’t fond of her, and never cared about her in the first place) and wanted her to be safe and undiscovered in her crevice of the world.

If only he could turn back time and—

Oh, wait. He had.

The irony of it all. His name was Dave (or it had been, before he had played time like his turntables) and his name, the name of the figure in red rising out of the Green Sun in the distance, was Dave Strider, the Knight of Time.

These little differences are key details.

That Red Dwarf he could have been but didn’t become was nowhere near as bright as the great green powerhouse they all beheld, but Dave the Strider was just that much closer to it- to her- than Dave the Sprite’s wings could ever bring him.

From her place in the sky, Jade smiled her silly smile down at him and it was like a dazzling ray of sunshine from a merciful god. 

…How could she have been right next to him one moment ago and now be so far away and so high above him, going to meet her Knight, the next?

The distance between them kept growing and eventually she looked away.

He, a bird with a broken wing, was nothing more than Dave of Guy. And he had been okay with that up until she had ceased to be Jade of Gal.

Now he just wanted Dave Strider, Knight of Time to fast forward him to some point on the timeline when he, Davesprite, wasn’t reduced to being a miserable crow picking over the carrion of past failures. There was a chance that this would all work out in the end and he, the flightless bird, could be happy. Yes. There was hope in the scratch resetting the cosmos because everything would be better and they’d all have a chance to win because this session, this one, was bigger trouble than what they’d anticipated. 

Dave Strider, Knight of Time and Jade Harley, Witch of Space were leaving this world to create a new one where her Space

and his Time

permeated into every aspect of one another to work together in a perfect marriage. 

Davesprite saw it all through his sunglasses, but he no longer knew how much (or what) his counterpart Dave Strider could divine from beneath the artificial darkness he dwelt in- a Knight and a Guy are not quite the same thing, after all. Would Dave the Knight really be the one to sweep her off her feet and away…?

He ignored his jealous heart and convinced himself that he would find joy in their final success. For now, he would just have to wait in agony for the end to come and claim him.


End file.
